Nudists’ park bids to remain private
A case testing the public’s right to access California beaches is blowing up in Santa Cruz County, where state coastal commissioners are questioning why a cozy public beach popular with surfers and nudists is gated — and can be opened only with a $100 key.
The increasingly bitter tussle is over a gate at Opal Cliffs Park that leads to a sandy cove known as Privates Beach, named by locals after the body parts that are sometimes on display there.
The county park, which is only 25 feet by 100 feet, has been run for 69 years by a special district that put up the gate, hired guards and charges $100 a year to enter the picturesque reserve.
The Opal Cliffs Recreation District withdrew an application Wednesday with the California Coastal Commission to amend its permit to allow the gate and fee, but its representative, Mark Massara, said the district will fight in court if necessary.
The Coastal Commission can try to force Opal Cliffs to take down the gate and eliminate the fees that it says restrict the public, especially low-income people, from reaching the famous seacoast.
“This is the only public beach
in California we know of that requires such a fee, which mostly benefits those who live in the immediate area and disproportionately impacts those least able to afford it,” said Noaki Schwartz, the Coastal Commission spokeswoman. “We intend to explore all possible options going forward, including seeking enforcement remedies.”
Massara, the lawyer representing the recreation district, said the Coastal Commission approved the fees in 1981 but recently decided that the permit was not valid and violates public access rights under the California Coastal Act and the state constitution.
He said he withdrew the application when it became clear to him that the application process was “a thinly veiled effort to eliminate all of the park’s existing permits.”
The commission staff “may well prefer controversy rather than collaboration,” said Massara. “I’m incredulous at the notion that the public can’t rely on these permits that staff seems to think they can unilaterally vitiate at any time.”
The battle is one of many that have been waged in California over the public’s right to visit the coast.
The 1972 California Coastal Zone Conservation Initiative made the entire coast, including all beach property below the mean high tide line, public property. The law also prohibited homes or developments from blocking public access to beaches and created the California Coastal Commission to enforce these mandates.
The most contentious fight in California is over Martins Beach, near Half Moon Bay, where Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla wants to restrict people from using a road through his property to get to the beach. One of the primary litigants opposing Khosla in that case happens to be Massara, who’s a surfer.
Similar battles have raged at Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, Shelter Cove in Humboldt County, Hollister Ranch in Santa Barbara County and Malibu in Southern California.
The situation at Privates Beach is complicated.
Santa Cruz County officials in 1949 allowed residents to create a special district run by a board of elected volunteers to manage the cove.
The Opal Cliffs district began charging an entrance fee as early as 1963 to reduce litter and vandalism and control traffic.
Patrick Veesart, who oversees coastal enforcement in Northern California for the Coastal Commission, said the original fence was not permitted until 1981. A deed restriction allowing a $20 fee was recorded in 1991, Veesart said, but then the district replaced the approved fence with an unpermitted 9-foot-tall wrought iron fence and gate.
The gate fee was raised from $20 to $100 in 2008, again without the approval of the Coastal Commission, Veesart said. Residents living on the winding road leading to the beach have been paying a $50 property fee for a key that opens the gate.
“In a nutshell, the gate and fence and fee program are unpermitted. They don’t have a coastal development permit,” Veesart said. “The fee program is exclusionary, by design. If you don’t have $100 to buy a pass, you don’t get to go to the beach, and a lot of people from hot inland areas can’t afford that.”
Residents and local surfers say the bigger fence, which was approved by the county and endorsed by the local sheriff ’s department, was necessary to prevent people from climbing over the fence, vandalizing the park and holding raves on the beach.
“What happened in the past before they put the bigger fence up, people would just hop over the fence and party all night long,” said Robert Weaver, a district resident and surfer known as Wingnut.
The fee is needed, he said, to pay for the cleaning and maintenance of the park and beach stairway.
Local residents and beachgoers, as many as 800 of whom have passes, resent the implication that they are members of an exclusive community.
Massara said the district and residents have tried everything over the past few years to appease the Coastal Commission, including unlocking the gate and allowing free daytime access during the summer.
He said the Opal Cliffs district also agreed to a 2008 proposal by Coastal Commission staff to charge only $5 a day for up to 10 people, but the commission later disclaimed its own recommendation.
The commission staff is recommending that the 9-foot gate be replaced with a 6-foot fence, as originally approved, and that the public be allowed in for free without any “ambassadors,” as park defenders call the gate monitors on Opal Cliff Drive.
Massara said the park district will do whatever it takes to maximize public access and alleviate commission concerns, but it won’t tear out the gate without a legal fight.
“We are entitled under law to sustain the park. We have a gardener, trash, water, insurance, a stairway down a steep bluff,” Massara said. “Our geologists and professionals suspect that stairway is going to cost us over $1 million to sustain over the next 20 years, and the Coastal Commission is not offering us a dime.”
Veesart said the Privates Beach battle is like no other.
“The precedent here is that if Opal (Cliffs) Park can charge a public access fee, then why can’t other public agencies charge an access fee?” Veesart said. “Is that what we want in California, all these public agencies charging a fee to access the beach?”